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I am learning that love is a daily walk with God and that the road is a very narrow road. Staying close to the burnings of His heart and not growing cold, it is a very narrow road. Mathew 24:12 says that in the last days the love of most will grow cold because of sin and lawlessness. I used to always look at this scripture apart from myself and think, well I will always love God and trust Him to help me stay far away from lawlessness. Here in Sudan I am learning the true meaning of this scripture.

I am learning that it is by the grace of God and walking with Him on this narrow road of love that I don’t grow cold. Being in the mission field or not, sometimes you have to deal with a culture that is so skewed in their thinking that if you don’t stay on this road with God, you can become frustrated and cynical toward the people you are ministering to or working alongside. If I don’t stay close to the burnings of His heart and stay on the narrow road with Him, it is very easy to become frustrated and hurt by the culture of a people and by the ways of a people and not necessarily individuals.

In Sudan, and many other Third World countries, the mindset of the culture is if something is left unguarded then it is there for the taking. If there is a way to take things without being caught, then it is done. It is a fact of life here, this is poverty, real poverty with no help from the government where children die of hunger everyday. What would you do? And the people who do these things will love you and smile at you and hug you and laugh with you, but will steal you blind behind your back and not think anything about it. And if they are caught they will put a curse of death on you never caring that it didn’t deserve that.

Count EVERYTHING as loss compared to Him and His love. Set His seal of love upon your heart because it is stronger than death and death is what happens to love if we consider our things more important than love. If we consider what we have lost compared to what can be gained for the Kingdom of God, then our love is growing cold already. It is a daily walk with God on this narrow road and few find it the Word says in Mathew 7:14. It says the gate is narrow that leads to life and few are they who find it. In Deuteronomy 30:19-20 God offers us life so that we may love the Lord our God, for He is our life and length of days. He who loses His life will find it. Jesus trusted no man yet He loved us all.

Everyday I see the narrow gate just behind me, always beckoning me to turn back and walk down the wide road for it seems easier. It beckons me to consider my stuff and guard it and don’t consider it as loss, to do something about it. But everyday Jesus takes my hand and He gently loves me down this narrow road. He shows me the burnings of His heart and He shows me that He came into this world with nothing but love and He left this world with the biggest love ever imaginable. That is the love He wants us to know. He wants us to share in His sufferings so that we can know this love and walk down the narrow road with Him.

Tuesday afternoon I started feeling achy all over my body and really tired. A crew worker came in to go to the clinic. He was sweating profusely and his eyes were so red. He was obviously sick. I did the paperwork and prayed for him as I do every person who goes to clinic. I actually tell them that they will be healed as they go. By the time I got off work I was feeling really bad. My skin was tingling all over, my ears hurt and I was warm to the touch. I immediately emailed my prayer team to pray for me. I went to bed very early, layered in clothes and blankets. I awoke the next morning feeling wonderful, praise God! It was like nothing was ever wrong with me.

Well, later that day, the guy I prayed for came back and told me that when he had come to see me to go to clinic he was feeling so sick and throwing up and his crew guys didn’t want him coming back from the site by himself but he insisted. He told me that the clinic diagnosed him with malaria and gave him meds. But he wanted me to know that as soon as I prayed for him, all his symptoms left! Haha! God kicked malaria in the seat of the pants!!! Go God! I agree with my Prayer Team leader that their prayers and my seed sown by prayer into this man totally synergized and destroyed whatever was trying to attack my body. God is so dynamic and so intricate and so versatile, who can ever know His ways about a thing?! He always makes me smile so big 😀

The Lord impressed upon me this week that sometimes we are so indifferent to those who are lying on the road dying that we don’t even chase away the vultures. I am the first to admit my negligence here. We see the man lying there and shake our head and say, he needs the Lord. Most of us won’t stop to offer him life because we are too afraid of our reception. We are afraid of rejection or failure or even being made fun of or people staring at us with indifference. If we see a man lying on the road dying, will we not offer to do CPR or call the EMS and a crowd will gather and all will pitch in to help. If we saw a child lying in the street and vultures were gathering around to feed upon this child, would we not go and chase them away and stand guard until help came? Should it not be the same for a dying soul? Oh Lord, help me to help the dying. Help me to chase away the vultures. Keep showing me the burnings of Your heart and cause Your fire to ignite me to action.